The State of the State of the Union? A Mess

“I must say to you,” President Gerald Ford said to us, in 1975, “that the state of the Union is not good.” In the same spirit of candor, I must say to you that the state of the State of the Union is not good. I don’t mean tomorrow night’s speech. I mean the State of the Union Message as an institution. This may not rise to the level of economic inequality as a national problem, but the speech is no less in need of fixing.

The litany of grievances about the State of the Union is as long as the litany of proposals, ideas, appeals, and admonitions that the speech always contains. George Will has called it “undignified … vulgar … a tiresome exercise in political exhibitionism.” ToWilliam Gavin, a former speechwriter for Richard Nixon, the speech is “a national embarrassment.” The most common complaint is that it is a laundry list, which is an insult to laundry lists. It is more a laundry bag, a sort of national hamper, into which rumpled articles are stuffed. Other critics agree with Justice Antonin Scalia, who has called the event a “cheerleading session,” or object to the occasionally inspiring, but usually cynical or cloying, spectacle of the guests in the House gallery, who are typically veterans and first responders.

The critics are right about nearly all of it. I say that as someone who was complicit in two State of the Union addresses, in 1999 and in 2000—some fifteen thousand words of text, not one line of which will ever be carved in granite. An Associated Press story last week referred to the State of the Union as “a speech its writers love to hate.” Indeed, it is. The speech is a misery to write—or, rather, to patch and stitch and slap together from fragments of past promises, pet projects, proud accomplishments, great goals, unfinished business, tired gestures, and cheap plays for applause. The State of the Union address is not really written by committee. It is written by flash mob—a sudden aggregation, inside and around the speechwriting offices, of White House aides, Cabinet secretaries, pollsters, and college roommates of the President.

Of course, none of this would matter, except to the speechwriters, if the resulting address were worth the trouble. With few exceptions—Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “four freedoms” speech, of 1941, for example, or Lyndon Johnson’s declaration of war on poverty, in 1964—it isn’t. The State of the Union address is rarely memorable. How could it be? It’s too shapeless to stick. For the first few minutes, the speech makes a stab at coherence—a theme (or a catchphrase) is introduced, a package of interrelated policies is presented. Then: entropy. (Which is an insult to entropy.)

Speechwriters take desperate measures to hold the thing together, to give it some semblance of structure. In 1999, at the prompting of a highly paid consultant, we resorted to what history will record as the longest, clumsiest refrain in any State of the Union address: “If we do these things … then we will begin to meet our generation’s historic responsibility to create twenty-first-century schools.” Also: “If we act in these areas … then we will begin to meet our generation’s historic responsibility to strengthen our families for the twenty-first century.” And so on, and so on, section by section. More often, though, we simply threw up our hands, telling each other, “The applause is the transition.”

If the State of the Union were a TV program—and it is—it could be said to have jumped the shark in 1982, when Ronald Reagan first directed our attention to the gallery. Sitting there was a man, a true hero, named Lenny Skutnik, who had plunged into the icy Potomac to save the life of a victim of a plane crash. It was a genuinely stirring moment, but, in the years since, salutes to extraordinary Americans have become shopworn and rote—like that segment where David Letterman walks the aisles of the Ed Sullivan Theatre and hands out meat. Members of Congress—who cannot, unlike you, change the channel—have begun to exact their revenge on the President: last year, a Texas congressman brought the rock musician and gun-rights absolutist Ted Nugent as his guest, and tomorrow night Sean Hannity, and his hair, will attend the speech at the invitation of Louie Gohmert, another Lone Star Republican.

The persistence—the calcification—of these traditions exerts a kind of levelling influence on the speech, irrespective of who’s giving it. Compare, for example, these passages from two State of the Union addresses.

First:

The values on which our Nation was founded—individual liberty, self-determination, the potential for human fulfillment in freedom—all of these endure. We find these democratic principles praised, even in books smuggled out of totalitarian nations and on wall posters in lands which we thought were closed to our influence.

And second:

America’s leadership in the world came to us because of our own strength and because of the values which guide us as a society: free elections, a free press, freedom of religious choice, free trade unions, and above all, freedom for the individual and rejection of the arbitrary power of the state. These values are the bedrock of our strength.

What compels this speech to drag as it does? The answer has to be inertia, an unwillingness to challenge convention—because no principle of aesthetics, no provision of the Constitution, requires the State of the Union to take this shape. The Constitution states only that the President “shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.” I’m no constitutional scholar, but I see nothing in there about shout-outs to the Interstate Highway System. When George Washington delivered America’s first annual message, in 1790, he limited himself to a thousand words. If you had suggested to him that he increase its length by six thousand words and pack it with legislative proposals that stood no chance of passing, he would have given you that look. (It was not a nice look.)

It’s time, then, to save this speech—this gas-guzzling boat of a speech—from itself. It shouldn’t be that difficult. Every President knows the elements of a good speech: a central proposition, an animating idea, a clear line of argument. It states its purpose plainly and gets to the point. It eschews the inessentials. (And eschews words like “eschews.”) One day, a President will give a State of the Union like this—one that really defines the central challenge for the country, proposes credible solutions, and leaves everything else for other speeches on other days.

In 1932, Franklin Roosevelt flew to Chicago to accept the Democratic Presidential nomination in person rather than sit on his front porch, as custom had it, and feign surprise when the telegram came. “Let it … be symbolic that in so doing,” he said, “I broke traditions. Let it be from now on the task of our Party to break foolish traditions.” Which party—which President—will break this one?

Jeff Shesol, a former speechwriter for President Clinton, is the author of “Mutual Contempt: Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and the Feud that Defined a Decade” and is a partner at West Wing Writers. Follow him on Twitter at @JeffShesol.

Photograph: AP.

Jeff Shesol, a former speechwriter for President Clinton, is the author of “Supreme Power: Franklin Roosevelt vs. the Supreme Court” and is a partner at West Wing Writers.